Tongue Twisters For Singers

Singers often consider their tone to be the one of the most important parts of their voice. Stage presence, confidence, vocal range and agility also feature as important areas.

Often singers do not consider the need for crisp, clear and precise articulation to complement and add to their vocal delivery.

Know Your Articulators

These are:

Tongue,

Teeth,

Lips

Jaw.

Try to use your articulators when forming consonant to help form your vowels This will give your words more clarity.

Try this exercise to help you be aware of where these sounds are formed in within your facial mask. What sounds good and what doesn’t? Eg if you dropped your jaw, or moved the position of your tongue, does it change the sound for better or worse?

If Pickford’s packers packed a packet of crisps would the packet of crisps that Pickford’s packers packed survive for two and a half years?

Six sleek swans swam swiftly southwards

How many cookies could a good cook cook If a good cook could cook cookies? A good cook could cook as much cookies as a good cook who could cook cookies.

How much wood could Chuck Woods’ woodchuck chuck, if Chuck Woods’ woodchuck could and would chuck wood? If Chuck Woods’ woodchuck could and would chuck wood, how much wood could and would Chuck Woods’ woodchuck chuck? Chuck Woods’ woodchuck would chuck, he would, as much as he could, and chuck as much wood as any woodchuck would, if a woodchuck could and would chuck wood.

Four furious friends fought for the phone.

Black background, brown background.

Five frantic frogs fled from fifty fierce fishes.

East Fife Four, Forfar Five

It’s not the cough that carries you off,
it’s the coffin they carry you off in!

She stood on the balcony, inexplicably mimicking him hiccuping, and amicably welcoming him in.

A tree toad loved a she-toad,
Who lived up in a tree.
He was a three-toed tree toad,
But a two-toed toad was she.
The three-toed tree toad tried to win,
The two-toed she-toad’s heart,
For the three-toed tree toad loved the ground,
That the two-toed tree toad trod.
But the three-toed tree toad tried in vain.
He couldn’t please her whim.
From her tree toad bower,
With her two-toed power,
The she-toad vetoed him.

What a to do to die today
At a quarter or two to two.

A terrible difficult thing to say
But a harder thing still to do.
The dragon will come at the beat of the drum
With a rat-a-tat-tat a-tat-tat a-tat-to
At a quarter or two to two today,
At a quarter or two to two.

I am not a pheasant plucker,
I’m a pheasant plucker’s son
but I’ll be plucking pheasants
When the pheasant plucker’s gone.

When a doctor doctors a doctor,
does the doctor doing the doctoring
doctor as the doctor being doctored wants to be doctored or
does the doctor doing the doctoring doctor as he wants to doctor?

If two witches would watch two watches, which witch would watch which watch?

The thirty-three thieves thought that they thrilled the throne throughout Thursday.

Something in a thirty-acre thermal thicket of thorns and thistles thumped and thundered threatening the three-D thoughts of Matthew the thug – although, theatrically, it was only the thirteen-thousand thistles and thorns through the underneath of his thigh that the thirty year old thug thought of that morning.

Six sick hicks nick six slick bricks with picks and sticks.

To sit in solemn silence in a dull, dark dock,
In a pestilential prison, with a life-long lock,
Awaiting the sensation of a short, sharp shock,
From a cheap and chippy chopper on a big black block!
To sit in solemn silence in a dull, dark dock,
In a pestilential prison, with a life-long lock,
Awaiting the sensation of a short, sharp shock,
From a cheap and chippy chopper on a big black block!
A dull, dark dock, a life-long lock,
A short, sharp shock, a big black block!
To sit in solemn silence in a pestilential prison,
And awaiting the sensation
From a cheap and chippy chopper on a big black block!

by W.S. Gilbert of Gilbert and Sullivan from The Mikado

The Final Fixing of the Foolish Fugitive

Feeling footloose, fancy-free and frisky, this feather-brained fellow finagled his fond father into forking over his fortune. Forthwith, he fled for foreign fields and frittered his farthings feasting fabulously with fair-weather friends. Finally, fleeced by those folly filled fellows and facing famine, he found him-self a feed flinger in a filthy farm-lot. He fain would have filled his frame with foraged food from fodder fragments.

Frustrated from failure and filled with forebodings, he fled for his family. Falling at his father’s feet, he floundered forlornly. “Father, I have flunked and fruitlessly forfeited further family favors . . .”

But the faithful father, forestalling further flinching, frantically flagged his flunkies to fetch forth the finest fatling and fix a feast.

But the fugitive’s fault finding frater, faithfully farming his father’s fields for free, frowned at this fickle forgiveness of former falderal. His fury flashed, but fussing was futile.

His foresighted father figured, “Such filial fidelity is fine, but what forbids fervent festivities? The fugitive is found! Unfurl the flags! With fanfare flaring, let fun, frolic and frivolity flow freely, former failures forgotten and folly forsaken.”